Qualcomm talks up Snapdragon roadmap

CES 2010 Qualcomm will launch more advanced Snapdragon processors will this year to give phones and smartbooks better resolution and number crunching capabilities.

Luis Pineda, a senior veep at the chip designer, ran through the Snapdragon roadmap at CES yesterday with the UK website Hexus. He said that a 45nm Snapdragon clocked at 1.3GHz is in development.

The chip – to be called 8X50A – will appear in products by the end of 2010, Pineda said. He was tight-lipped about the exact benefits the chip will bring to smartphones – aside from the obvious improved number crunching capabilities, perhaps because an even faster Snapdragon will then appear before Christmas.

Known as the 8X72, the Qualcomm Snapdragon will be a dual-core 1.5GHz chip designed to enable 1080p resolution imaging and improved performance in smartphone and smartbook devices – the report added.

Quite when the 8X72 will first appear in gadgets is unknown, though the chip will be made available to manufacturers before the end of 2010.